Welcome to Power Sponsorship!

I’m Kim Skildum-Reid and I’m a corporate sponsorship strategist, trainer, speaker, and author. I truly love best practice sponsorship, and helping my clients and the industry get the most from this amazing marketing medium is my mission.

This website is overflowing with resources for industry professionals, so have a good look around. You’ll also find plenty of information on what my team and I can do for your brand or organisation – consulting, training, strategy sessions, coaching, and more – and the results you can expect to achieve. I look forward to hearing from you!

I’ve spent the past few months watching Breaking Bad as I fly around the world. And as I’ve beavered my way through the episodes – currently mid-season four, so no spoilers! – I realised that there are a number of valuable lessons that sponsorship seekers can learn from Walter White. If you’re not a Breaking Bad fan, some of these references may seem a bit obtuse, but the advice stands, so please read on. Be sure your offer is in a league of its own Walter’s meth is the best. Nothing else can touch it for quality, and that’s what you should be aspiring to. Sponsors receive hundreds, sometimes thousands, of proposals every single month. […] Read More

When it comes to sponsorship selection, there are a few good reasons to do it, as well as a few bad reasons that are sometimes unavoidable, but often manageable. Good To change your target markets’ perceptions and behaviours around your brand To align with your customers and/or staff through their passions To reward your customers and/or staff To secure sales rights (provided the profit on projected sales is more than the sponsorship costs) Some combination of the above Bad, but generally manageable Senior executive choice – for how to manage, see “How to Manage (or Get Rid of) a Senior Executive’s Pet Sponsorship“ Regional manager choice (for how to manage, see “Sponsorship Politics: How to […] Read More

Sponsors all over the world are embracing best practice sponsorship – adding value to the fan experience and favouring meaning and creativity over volume or visibility. This is fantastic, and as the gulf between great sponsors and old-school sponsors widens, more see the light and jump the chasm. Except the sponsors that don’t. They decide that their best approach is incremental improvement, and they count it as a “win” if their sponsorship isn’t as crap this year as it was last year. They’re no longer textbook terrible, but they are utterly lacking in distinction. All the sponsorships in the portfolio look virtually the same. They’re beige. As British politician Benjamin Disraeli once said, “The most dangerous strategy as […] Read More

OMG, I get a lot of sponsorship spam. I bet I average a dozen or more spamsorship emails a day, and they all say virtually the same thing: Greetings! (No name, because that would mean they’d have to do some actual work.) We need money for blah-di-blah (usually with a side order of either sizzle or neediness) Date by which we need the money (which is invariably within a month or two) We can put your brand here and here and here (never actually naming your brand) Please give us the money Gmail address (because having a domain – and the associated professionalism – would take $7 and five minutes) And if they’re getting really fancy, they […] Read More

I wrote a post a few months ago about negotiating and managing multi-brand sponsorship. Then, just this past week, I stumbled across a 2013 post by Oxfam, showcasing the best performers in their Behind the Brands Scorecard. That is, in and of itself, really interesting and should be read, but they also created an immensely useful infographic for understanding what companies own what brands in the consumer foods space. You’ll see that ten giant companies – which Oxfam estimates cumulatively sell US $1.1 billion a day – own almost every major food brand we see in our grocery stores. The infographic is over 18 months old and may be a little out of date, but would […] Read More

This is a pretty common question in my inbox, with many sponsorship seekers telling me that they’ve left “literally dozens” of voicemails or had been following up on a proposal for months. Clearly, it’s time to address this subject, as so many people appear to be getting it wrong. First off, I am all for following up. Sponsors are busy and get lots of approaches, and it is both the prudent and professional thing to do. What I’m not in favour of is overdoing it. Following up too much, or for too long, doesn’t make you look committed and pro-active. It makes you look unprofessional and desperate, and neither is how you want a sponsor […] Read More